Mab Segrest > Quotes

“If we generic gay and lesbian whitefolks set as our movement's goal being assimilated into American culture, getting 'our piece of the pie,' we ignore or deny the reality that gay and lesbian people of color will never be assimilated in the same way within this system because it was constituted to exclude them.”
― Mab Segrest

“hard times create demagogues everywhere”
― Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor

“It only takes 'one voice with authority' to sanction and ignite hatred smoldering underneath. Now it is ablaze!”
― Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor

“Henderson had learned the hard way the dangers of irony in a culture so committed to its deceptions, to those obvious lies that held together its violent rationales.”
― Mab Segrest, Administrations of Lunacy: A Story of Racism and Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum

“Deegan elaborated that the goal of such recovery “is not to become normal” or to “get mainstreamed,” but to “embrace our human vocation of becoming more deeply, more fully human.”
― Mab Segrest, Administrations of Lunacy: A Story of Racism and Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum

“As Mrs. Carter in another context observed, there are adequate financial resources available to fund adequate mental health if we simply invest in the right kinds of programs—the ones that we know work—rather than squandering millions and millions of dollars and lives in jails and prisons.”
― Mab Segrest, Administrations of Lunacy: A Story of Racism and Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum

“As a child of Europeans, a woman whose families have spent many generations on these shores, some of them in relative material privilege, my culture raised me to compete for grades, for jobs, for money, for self-esteem. As my lungs breathed in competition, they breathed out the stale air of individualism, delivering the toxic message: You are on your own. Being "queer" only amplified the problem. Traveling across race and class and cultural boundaries, my ear eventually became tuned to different vibrations so that I began to hear, first as a murmur, then as clearly articulated sound: We... are... in... this... together. My lungs relaxed some, my chest gasped the clearer air.”
― Mab Segrest, Memoir of a Race Traitor: Fighting Racism in the American South